


The Gay Divorcée

by Who Shot AR (akerwis)



Category: Playboy Club
Genre: 1970s, Bittersweet, Christmas, Conversations, Divorce, Established Relationship, F/F, Family, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Third Person, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akerwis/pseuds/Who%20Shot%20AR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice's first Christmas without Sean is a quiet one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gay Divorcée

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mammothluv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mammothluv/gifts).



_December 24th, 1974_

Alice's first Christmas without Sean is a quiet one.

The divorce itself has only been finalized for about two weeks; she secretly thinks of it as a Christmas present for everyone involved. She and Sean are the real recipients here, of course, but Frances and Joe are reaping the benefits themselves.

"So what's the verdict?" Frances asks when Alice comes back into the living room of their apartment-- _theirs_ , two months new to both of them--and sits down heavily on the davenport.

Alice swings her feet up onto the coffee table and sighs. "Well, we're definitely not going to DeKalb tomorrow morning, I can tell you that much."

"That bad?" Frances scoots (if Frances can ever be said to do something as banal as _scoot_ ) closer to her on the davenport and puts an arm around her.

"Mom still won't talk to me," answers Alice, tipping her head to the side until it touches Frances'. "Nancy'll come out and see us after New Year's, but she's not bringing the kids."

That's the part that leaves Alice's chest aching. She wants to see her nieces, shooting up into adulthood, all of them. (It's hard to believe that Linda will be off to college this year, let alone that Donna has her junior prom to look forward to in the spring and Cindy starts high school next fall.) She'd prepared herself for the possibility that her family would rather disavow a daughter than acknowledge a lesbian, but she hadn't considered that they'd compromise by telling her she couldn't be trusted around a trio of teenage girls.

"Well," and Frances' voice is light, Alice suspects consciously so, her hand warm on Alice's side, "we can go see Daddy instead, if you want to. He's looking forward to meeting you."

There's no point in dwelling on it, especially when she's got a good idea that Sean's Christmas is going to be a lot less pleasant than hers. His mother gave up asking when she'd finally see a grandchild when Sean was thirty-five and Alice, thirty-three, but the realization that her one and only chance at a grandchild happened before Alice even _met_ Sean must have been a shock. So Alice nods. "Let's do that."

Frances turns her head towards Alice to kiss the corner of her eye, right where Alice looks for crows' feet in the mornings. "Until then, we can always find something else to do."

This pulls a smile from Alice, and she meets Frances' mouth in a proper kiss. The lingering bitterness of her call to DeKalb is eased somewhat in the warmth of Frances' affection and the knowledge that _someone's_ parent still wants to see her. "We've got a bottle of wine we could open."

"If you open it up, I'll put some music on."

"Deal."

As Alice pulls the cork out of the wine in the kitchen, she hears Nat King Cole's voice drifting out from the turntable speakers. She sets the wine on a tray with a pair of glasses and a plate of the Christmas cookies she frosted last weekend. There's not so much as a wobble, from the glassware or her arm, when she carries it out to the coffee table. (Sometimes it's fun to realize that if she wanted, she could still be as good a waitress as she was in her twenties, even if she's not sure she could ever return to eight-hour shifts in pumps.)

They spend the night eating, drinking, and being merry, and in the morning, snow is blowing past their bedroom window when they wake. The day lacks the frenetic pace of Christmases past, traveling two hours to see family and two more hours to see _more_ family before driving home exhausted--and, Alice realizes, staring out at the blinding white world of snow and sunshine that Christmas morning brings, she loves it all the more for that.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the story I'd planned to write when I was originally assigned to you, but real-life responsibilities dictated that I had to jettison those plans for now. I'm sorry I had to default on you; this story is my attempt to make up for it some.
> 
> I hope the rest of your 2011 is pleasant and your 2012, promising. ♥


End file.
